Monday, April 29, 2013

It's Spring Cleaning Time - Reorganizing My Kitchen!

I go through these spurts of inspiration and activity. Sometimes I go on a reading binge where I read every book I can get my hands on, but then I won't post anything on the internet for like over a year! Then, there are times when I have to clean up everything around me. So, this past week, I've been tackling my kitchen.

Have you ever read those magazine articles that give you reorganizing tips? Well, they're actually pretty helpful. Here are a few things that I did:

visited my local dollar store and got lots of cheap plastic baskets and other organizers.

took food stuffs out of their boxes & put them into smaller see-through containers.

consolidated like items together

I wish I took a "before" picture of my pantry, but like most kitchens, it was stuffed with various things that just got stuck there - in other words, absolutely no organization whatsoever. Now, as you can see, I grouped all the grains and pastas together, optimized vertical space by using those wire shelves and grouped smaller items, like oatmeal packets, into small bins. Oh, and since I didn't want to see the scratched wall behind my newly organized pantry every time I opened up the doors, I lined the cabinet walls with some leftover scrapbook paper that I had (Michael's always seems to put those scrapbook paper packs on sale, also I've found them cheap at Marshalls and Ross).

Here's my other kitchen cabinet, which shows a better picture of my scrapbook-lined cabinet walls (just used some double-sided tape to adhere them to the walls), as well as my cookbook collection.

Here's snapshot of my kitchen cabinet of bowls, trays and small kitchen appliances. I bought those cheap shelf liner rolls from Ikea, but didn't like how they were see-through. So, I used scrapbook paper to line the shelves and then placed the plastic shelf liners over them. I also got cheap plastic trays from Ikea and used them to organize my small appliances (blender, ice cream maker, etc.). The trays keep everything together, but also makes it easier for me to pull them out of the shelves when I need them. Those wire plate holder were a total steal at the dollar store. I found them at Target and The Container Store for like $3-4 a piece, but I got them for only a dollar!

I actually went through every drawer in my kitchen and got rid of anything that was broken or useless. I lined the drawers with a kitchen towel and used dollar store baskets to keep everything organized.

We've lived in our house for over four years, but I finally feel like I've got my kitchen the way I want it!